While You Were Sleeping
by kaheels
Summary: Coulson and May address what, exactly, happened while she was sleeping.


May didn't have to look over her shoulder to see who had entered the cockpit as she heard the door open and close. It was only a matter of time before he came to talk to her.

"I hope you're not planning to drink that Haig now," she tossed back over her shoulder, aiming for playful but not quite hitting the mark. "I'm pretty sure the sentiment is lost." She wanted to be able to tease him about it and move on, but she was hurt.

Coulson grimaced, and though she couldn't see it, she knew he took her comment to heart.

"I'm guessing what's left of it is vapors now," he replied as he stepped farther into the room, standing behind the empty seat next to hers. "I could track down a new one, but it wouldn't be the same." He bowed his head in defeat, turning his eyes to look at her. He could read the pain in the set of her jaw even if most would perceive her face as impassive. He shook his head, inwardly berating himself for his own part in her current physical and emotional pain.

She finally turned to face him and he averted his gaze. "There's still something you're not telling me," she accused. She didn't know what else he was holding onto, but it wasn't like him to avoid eye contact. Not with her. The whole thing was so confusing. He'd figured it out so easily the last time she was replaced. And she had felt like they had been drawing closer before AIDA had ripped them apart. How could he not have known? At first, she'd felt guilty for whatever her android had done, but her frustration was building and the guilt was transforming into anger. She wouldn't stand for being punished for something she hadn't done.

He slid around to sit in the seat he'd been hovering behind. He let out a sigh, but couldn't seem to answer her accusation.

She pressed a few buttons on the console and stood up suddenly, as though she'd been startled by something, looking for a fight. She wanted to run, or hit something, but even the act of standing so quickly had her light-headed, still reeling from weeks of inactivity followed by a shot of adrenaline. She grounded herself on the seat she'd vacated to avoid swaying.

"I don't understand," she wanted to shout at him, but it came out as a whisper. "Why won't you tell me? How can you not understand that it wasn't me? Whatever she did to you, it's not my fault."

"Don't you think I know that!" He raised his voice, but not his head. Her words hit him harder than she could know as he considered what it implied about his experiences with her android.

"Then why?" She did shout this time.

"Because it's my fault. All of it. It's my fault," he muttered miserably at his shoes. Too ashamed to face the woman that he had failed.

She stared at his profile, trying to work backwards in her head, to understand how he could possibly blame himself for a mad scientist and his evil robot kidnapping her. She wasn't completely clear on the sequence of events, but was reasonably certain that Phil had come looking for her as soon as the impostor was rooted out. It was no use. She needed more information. "How can you. . ."

"I should have known," he said with such tragic conviction that May once again started imagining all of the terrible things that might have been perpetrated in her name.

"Phil, I need you to tell me what happened. Did I. . .Did she. . ."

"She was perfect." The words slipped past his lips. If it weren't for the quiet of the cockpit, she would have missed it. He snapped his head up in alarm as he realized what he said. She met his gaze only briefly before turning away from him, but he watched the set of her shoulders as her hurt morphed into anger.

He stood up and took a step towards her, "May, I . . ."

He was silenced as she spun back around and leveled him with an icy glare, "Don't."

"May, please, I'm so sorry."

She took in a measured breath and responded with an ominously controlled tone, "You didn't come find me sooner because my copy was preferable to the real thing?"

Coulson moved to take another step towards her, but she tilted her head at him and he was wise enough to stop. "No, May, I need you to know that's not true," he begged, leaning towards her, as if he could will her to feel his sincerity.

She met his eyes and narrowed hers.

He was desperate now. "May, she wasn't an impostor like last time. She was you. I mean, she wasn't, but she was. She just, she fought like you fight. She knew everything you know, every mission, every inside joke and prank. The hatred of coffee –" His desperation petered off into resignation in the end as he became more unsure that he could ever explain it or make it better.

Coulson looked at his hands, unaware of the trap he'd created for himself. He missed the look that crossed her face as she came to the terrible conclusion that he had inadvertently led her to with his own frantic words.

"If she was so perfectly me, Coulson," she spat his name out, "how are you so convinced you should have known sooner?" She looked down, considering how he could have opened up their symbolic bottle of Haig with someone else. How AIDA must have made her android less broken, and more open. Her anger only boiled more as she thought of Coulson enjoying his time with the improved version of herself.

Coulson quickly realized his mistake and he rushed to head off May's line of thinking. "Don't go there May. She was you, no more, no less. That's why we were all so convinced. That's why they. . ."

"But what about you, Phil? THEY don't know me like you do. What did you miss?" She was throwing it at him now, turning her insecurity into carefully directed aggression with well-practiced precision.

He took a breath, trying to consider his words better this time, wary of misspeaking if he wasn't careful.

She didn't give him the chance to be deliberate, aiming the question at him again, emphasizing each word. "What. Did. You. . ."

"I kissed her!" he blurted, unable to bear her anger and disappointment anymore.

Melinda froze, trying to process what he'd said. She was somehow removed from the emotional implications of his statement, instead trying to draw a line from him kissing her android to his guilt over not recognizing the switch.

He barreled on, unaware of her thoughts, but determined to get it all out now that he'd opened the door. His voice was raised, though he wasn't sure whether it was out of anger or fear or desperation. "She was you, May! She was you!" His hands were gesturing wildly as if that would somehow prove his point.

"She was you in every moment, in every detail. I just, I. . ." he stammered as he fought to find the words to make her understand. "She was so damn stubborn and reckless and yet still. . . she, she was quiet and kind. I mean, she was. . . she called me on my crap and rolled her eyes at me at all the right moments." The volume of his tirade got progressively lower as his anger dissolved into his thoughts of what it was that made May the unique person she was. "I mean, she even had all the same aches and pains that you try to hide. The way you grimace when you raise your left arm above your head before you've properly stretched. Or how your right knee hurts in the cold ever since Bahrain. She had your same stance and hatred of heels. She kept me honest and centered like nobody else can. She was you down to the finest detail of your beautiful face." He paused, not realizing quite how much he had given away, being more focused on getting through to her.

She had given up on tracing his logic and was now trying to absorb just how much he was revealing.

"Melinda," he continued, his voice now tender and broken, "she was perfect, just like you, except. . ." he sighed and looked back to the ground, unable to handle how bare he felt under her scrutiny.

May couldn't take it anymore and she stepped forward into his space, drawing his eyes back up to hers with the force of her presence. "Except what, Phil?" The fire in her voice had extinguished leaving nothing but her sincerest need to understand.

"Except she wanted to be with me," he whispered, not quite meeting her eyes, "and I ignored the fact that the way she was drawing me closer wasn't really right because I felt like we'd been approaching it lately. And I wanted it to be real." He met her eyes then and saw a very subtle glisten in them that matched his own. Seeing how emotional she was upset him and his voice started to rise again. "I needed it to be real, so I ignored it, and you stayed trapped for weeks." He was getting worked up as he thought about all that May had been through because of his blindness. "I flirted with her and she played me while you were stuck in hell. I kissed her and then she pulled a god damn gun on me. And I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." He practically shouted his apology at her.

May stared at him for a moment, trying to get a grasp of everything she was hearing. She had been so hurt that he could be fooled by her replica because she was certain that they had been slowly drawing closer before she'd been kidnapped. Now he was telling her that she was right, he'd felt it too. That closeness had been used against them, and now they both thought that none of it was real. But he wanted it to be real. He had kissed her. She didn't know how to process the information that she had kissed Phil Coulson without actually kissing him. She couldn't think of a more infuriating thing than that simple fact. Phil Coulson had kissed Melinda May and she had no memory of it.

She shook her head as if that would help erase the reality of what had happened and looked at Coulson. He looked so crestfallen and remorseful and she couldn't let it stand. None of this was either of their faults.

"Phil," she said, and he dutifully returned his eyes to look at hers, ready to accept his punishment. She didn't have the words to reassure him, that wasn't really her strong suit. Instead, she put her right hand on his neck and traced his jaw with her thumb. "Phil, she wasn't playing you. I wasn't playing you," she added. This whole situation made pronouns a real pain in the ass.

"How could you know that?" he asked, with a desperate, incredulous look.

She gave up on words entirely and took another step towards him and up onto her toes to place a gentle kiss right at the corner of his mouth drawing back just enough to gauge his reaction.

That seemed to free him from his trance as he immediately snaked his left hand around her waist and pulled her to him in a tight hug, reassuring himself of her tangible existence. His right hand slid up her back, into her hair, and to the back of her head, holding her in place as he brought his lips to her hairline and breathed her in as he left a kiss there.

"I thought I'd lost you, this, whatever we are," he stumbled to express his relief.

She smiled and looked up at him. "Shut up and kiss me," she demanded.

He obeyed, pulling tighter with his left hand on her waist to keep her close as he adjusted his other hand down to her neck so he could bend and kiss her, gently pressing his lips to hers and stroking her jaw and ear with his thumb, trying to encourage her to take the lead, feeling hyper-aware of her current physical state.

She smiled against his lips and pressed further into him, parting her lips to deepen the kiss. He responded by trying to pull her even closer, which only succeeded in lifting her feet off the ground. She laughed, and he pulled back to see the rare moment, a welcome reprieve from the storm of emotions they'd just endured. He laughed as well as he set her back on her feet.

"You should have done that a lot sooner," she teased him leaning her head against his chest.

"Well. . ." he started, until the look she shot him as her head popped off his chest had him swallowing his ill-advised joke.


End file.
